Abstract
The study focused on the relative effects of reflective teaching (RT) and problem-based learning
(PBL) on gender in relation to students‟ acquisition of 21st century skills in Basic Technology. Four
research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. The non-equivalent control group design
was adopted. Two JSS 3 intact classes were used. The pretest and posttest consisted of the
construction of a building model, and the installation and activation of solar panels for green energy,
respectively. The projects were validated by three industrial technical education experts from the
University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Portharcout.
The reliability of the projects was determined using the Kuder-Richardson Formular 20 technique and
the coefficients were .84 for the construction of a building model and .81for the installation and
activation of solar panels. The projects were assessed through process evaluation using an adapted
instrument on four domains of 21st century skills namely, digital age literacy, inventive thinking,
effective communication and high productivity. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the
research questions while the hypotheses were tested using ANCOVA at .05 level of significance. The
findings indicated that though there was general improvement in the performance of the students
following the application of the two instructional strategies, boys taught with reflective teaching
performed significantly better on inventive thinking and high productivity skills while girls taught with
the same method performed significantly better on digital age literacy and effective communication
skills. However, in the PBL, boys performed significantly better than girls on inventive thinking while
no significant difference was observed in their mean scores on digital age literacy, effective
communication and high productivity skills. Among the findings is that gender has some influence on
the extent to which each of the two teaching methods affects students‟ acquisition of 21st century
skills in Basic Technology. However, PBL should be given more emphasis as it has shown to be less
gender-biased than the reflective teaching method.
Publication Date: 2018-12-06